What Causes Eye Twitching?

There are several problems that can cause eye twitching, including dry eye, a turned eyelash or essential blepharospasm. Treat essential blepharospasm with Botox injections to prevent dangerous eye twitching with information from an ophthalmologist in this free video on eye care and vision problems.

Video Transcript

My name is Doctor Alan Watson. I'm an ophthalmologist in Saint Joseph, Missouri and we're here today to talk about eye problems. There's different things that can cause the eyelid muscles to twitch. A dry eye, and in turned eyelash can frequently cause your eyelid to spasm involuntarily from the foreign body sensation. But people that are getting on in their years, sometimes can have what's called essential blepharospasm which is, nobody knows exactly why, but the orbiculares muscle that surrounds the eyelids on the inside of the lid, can actually go in to spasm and those patients, it can be quite debilitating as they try to drive their car and their eyelid involuntarily squeezes shut. And so for people with essential blepharospasm, those are best treated by using Botox which is a botulinum toxin that's injected underneath the skin and that actually paralyzes that orbiculares muscle from going in to spasm. And so, that can have side effects too where they can't even get their eye closed and those injections would need to be repeated in three to four months. But those patients are usually quite happy because as you would realize that if you're eyelid's closing involuntarily while you're driving your car, you get to where you're some major safety concerns quickly because you can't see where to operate your vehicle and so they'll tolerate some flaccidness of their eyelids to be able to conduct their business and do the things that they want to do when they want to do them. This has been Doctor Alan Watson, ophthalmologist at Saint Joseph, Missouri discussing different problems and the treatment of different eye problems with you.